NAB Radio Show in Philadelphia

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*If the big news story from PENNSYLVANIA
last week was the G-20 summit that drew world leaders, protesters
and news media to Pittsburgh, there's no question that the big
industry news story was taking place 300 miles away across
the state, where the NAB Radio Show drew some 2500 radio people
to the Philadelphia Convention Center for three days of exhibits,
conferences and awards.

You'll read comprehensive coverage of the whole event at your
choice of national radio news sites (we recommend Inside
Radio, especially because we work there) - so for NERW this
week, we'll focus on what the convention meant to radio people
here in the northeast.

Many of those northeast radio people didn't make it out to
the big NAB Show in Las Vegas in April, when the economy (and
travel budgets) hit a low point - but the convenience of a show
that was within a few hours' drive or an easy train ride was
too much to pass up, which may explain why we saw so many familiar
faces on the show floor. (Below, we see New England group owners
Bob Vinikoor and Dennis Jackson with Carl Strube and Pete Falconi
of WNBP in Newburyport and Jon Becker of WSLP in Saranac Lake.)

This was, all in all, an optimistic show for small radio operators.
While there weren't many deals actually being announced at this
year's show, we left Philadelphia with the general sense that
the decline in station prices is offering a real opportunity
to broadcasters with the resources to start buying up stations
from debt-laden bigger owners.

Owners of all sizes found good news on the show floor, too:
while there were few ground-breaking new products, there were
plenty of vendors offering inexpensive versions of their consoles,
automation systems, transmitters and antennas aimed at stations
looking to save money without compromising too much on quality.

There was good news in the session rooms, too: under the FCC's
new leadership, the Media Bureau is promising quicker action
to clear the backlog of indecency complaints and other issues
that have been clogging the desks at the Portals.

There was controversy as well - we spent Friday morning in
a session devoted to the thorny topic of an HD Radio power increase,
a topic that's of particular concern in the crowded FM spectrum
along the northeast corridor. Indeed, one of the key studies
being debated looked at the tight spacing between Greater Media's
WKLB (102.5) in Boston and Rhode Island public station WRNI-FM
(102.7 Narragansett Pier), which has complained of interference
from WKLB's tests at increased digital power levels. The FCC
appears to be waiting for industry leaders including Ibiquity,
NPR Labs and the "Joint Parties" (the station owners
and manufacturers pushing for a power increase) to come together
on a solution - and at least on Friday morning, the sense was
that a compromise involving small power increases and additional
studies was in the works, but not finalized.

As
for awards, four Marconi Awards went home with NERW-land broadcasters:
Jerry Lee's WBEB (101.1 Philadelphia) won hometown honors as
both major-market station of the year and AC station of the year,
while Matt Siegel of Boston's WXKS-FM won major-market personality
of the year and Buffalo's WGR (550) won sports station of the
year.

Next year, the NAB Radio Show moves down I-95 to Washington,
where it appears NAB intends to use it at least in part as a
major lobbying event, possibly with a smaller show floor.

*Philadelphia is mourning a familiar weekend talk voice. Steve
Friedman was known as "Mr. Movie" for his talk shows
that aired for decades on WWDB, WCAU and most recently on WCAU's
successor, WPHT (1210). Friedman died September 20 after a battle
with kidney disease. He was 62.

And more sad news from the Philadelphia radio scene - there's
word that "Diamond Jim" Nettleton, one of the city's
signature voices from his early days at WFIL to later work at
WCAU-FM/WOGL and WPEN, is gravely ill. We'll keep you posted...

In Pittsburgh, David Edgar is the new operations manager at
Clear Channel's six-station cluster. The veteran of Indianapolis'
Emmis stations, where he was operations director, will also serve
as PD for WWSW (94.5) and WKST-FM (96.1).

There are new calls at now-silent WAMO-FM (106.7 Beaver Falls):
it appears the former urban station will be WAOB when it returns
to the air with Catholic programming. Meanwhile, Steel City's
WLTJ (92.9 Pittsburgh) is going urban AC in the evening hours,
launching a new evening "Q in the City" show with former
WAMO-FM PD Tracey Lee in hopes of picking up some of WAMO's former
listeners.

In
Huntingdon County, east of Altoona, there's once again a local
radio station: Forever has flipped WBSS (106.3 Mount Union) from
a simulcast of State College-based WBUS (93.7 Boalsburg) to oldies
"Hunny 106.3," under new calls WHUN-FM. Most of the
station's programming so far come from Scott Shannon's "True
Oldies Channel."

In Scranton, Family Life Radio's new station, WCIG (107.7
Dallas), is hoping to improve its signal. It's applying to move
from its present 1.25 kW/725' facility on Bear Mountain, in the
Endless Mountains south of its old city of license, Tunkhannock,
to a new 2.45 kW/518' DA signal from Lookout Mountain overlooking
Pittston, with much stronger coverage of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

*Just one bit of NEW JERSEY
news: translator W220AA (91.9 Parlin) is back on the air,
now relaying the "Bridge" religious format of owner
Bridgelight's WRDR (89.7 Freehold Township). It's been almost
two years since Bridgelight bought the translator from Maria
Liadis for $55,000, with the stated intention of relaying WRDR.

THE 2010 CALENDAR
IS HERE!

The brand-new Tower Site Calendar 2010 is
now shipping, complete with more than a dozen full-color images
of sites from Deer Point in Boise to KYPA in Los Angeles to Mount
Mansfield in Vermont.

Just a few of our individually-numbered,
hand-signed limited first edition are still in stock- and of
course your purchase of any version of the calendar helps support
the continued production of NERW and Tower Site of the Week.

And we still have a very small quantity
of earlier calendars available, too, if you missed some...

*A MASSACHUSETTS broadcaster is filing
for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Sandab Communications, which does
business as Cape Cod Broadcasting, owns hot AC WQRC (99.9 Barnstable),
country WKPE (103.9 South Yarmouth), AC WOCN (104.7 Orleans)
and classical WFCC (107.5 Chatham), as well as the World Classical
Network - and it says it owes M&T Bank $6.5 million dollars,
as well as a $3.5 million debt to Charles River Broadcasting
that still remains from the $7.5 million purchase of the Orleans
and Chatham stations. Sandab says it will continue the stations'
operations without change while it reorganizes.

There's just one
other piece of Bay State news this week, and it comes from the
unlicensed side of the dial: "WPOT," the Dorchester-based
pirate that's already been visited once by the FCC, has changed
frequencies. The former 97.5 operation is now on 87.7, though
it's still calling itself "Hot 97."

*Jeff Shapiro's Great Eastern
Radio is adding two more stations to its NEW HAMPSHIRE holdings
with a deal to pick up WNNH (99.1 Henniker) and WWHQ (101.5 Meredith)
from Nassau Broadcasting, which had to spin those two signals
to stay under FCC ownership caps. No sale price has been announced
for that pair of signals; meanwhile, we hear that Great Eastern
won't be closing on the $700,000 deal it announced almost a year
ago to acquire WCVR (102.1) and WTSJ (1320) in Randolph, VERMONT
from Ken Barlow's Vox group. WTSJ has already shifted programming,
switching from a simulcast of Great Eastern's country WXXK (100.5
Lebanon NH) back to Vox's news-talk WEAV (960 Plattsburgh NY).

*It's still licensed to Gloucester, Massachusetts - but translator
W236BX (95.1) continues its march westward across southern New
Hampshireto what we expect will be a new home in Fitchburg.
We've been keeping track of W236BX's migrations, and the latest
chapters found it moving across the Nashua area, from a site
east of Nashua to another site just west of Route 3 and just
south of Nashua. The latest construction permit puts W236BX just
north of the state line and just south of Hollis, N.H. How many
more hops until it lands in Fitchburg to translate WPKZ (1280)?
Stay tuned...

*In southern MAINE, there's a new
city of license for Saga's WYNZ (100.9) - it's now "moved"
from Westbrook to South Portland, with no change to its physical
facilities.

In Skowhegan, Mountain Wireless flipped WSKW (1160) from ESPN
sports to "Legacy 1160," playing standards and oldies,
on Sept. 6.

In Rockland, WMCM (103.3) has dropped the last of its local
programming, along with its syndicated "Real Country"
format, in favor of a straight simulcast with Blueberry Broadcasting's
sister country station "The Bear" out of Bangor, WBFB
(104.7 Brewer). Morning man Don Shields, a quarter-century veteran
of mid-coast radio, is out of work as a result, reportedly notified
only by a telephone call.

Budget-cutting
at Blueberry has also added a third station to the WBFB simulcast,
as WLKE (99.1 Bar Harbor) drops its local programming as well.
We're also hearing that Blueberry is now originating its mid-coast
sports network (WFAU 1280 Gardiner/WRKD 1450 Rockland/WIGY 97.5
Madison) from Bangor instead of Augusta - and that WAEI (910
Bangor) is signing off at night to save a few dollars.

And back in Portland, Citadel's WCYY (94.3 Biddeford) made
some headlines over the weekend for an "incident" in
which the station's jocks were said to have been suspended after
deciding on their own to run a commercial-free weekend...though
the whole thing smells suspiciously like a publicity stunt from
where we sit.

*Two RHODE ISLAND noncommercial FMs
are taking advantage of the disappearance of analog channel 6
from the Providence market to improve their signals.

The Wheeler School's WELH (88.1 Providence) already held a
construction permit to boost power from its present vertical-only
150 watts, but with WLNE gone from channel 6, it's now been granted
4 kW/134' from a circularly-polarized antenna at a new site in
Rehoboth, Mass. The new WELH directional pattern was coordinated
with Bryant University's WJMF (88.7 Smithfield), which now holds
a CP to boost its power from 225 watts to 1200 watts/535' from
a directional antenna on Peck Hill in Johnston.

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*In upstate NEW YORK, broadcast veterans
from two markets got together to honor themselves and their colleagues
last week.

This year's living Buffalo honorees included longtime WIVB-TV
reporter Marie Rice, former WKBW-TV reporter Don Polec (who later
spent many years in Philadelphia at WPVI and is now syndicating
his own feature segments), top-notch voice talent and ex-DJ/programmer
Pat Feldballe, and Tribune CEO Randy Michaels, whose broadcast
career began in western New York in the early seventies.

Michaels came from Chicago with an entourage that included
WGN general manager Tom Langmyer, himself a Buffalo native, and
"Radio's Best Friend" and itinerant videographer Art
Vuolo. And for someone who's received plenty of honors over a
long career, Michaels was genuinely moved at the honor from his
old Buffalo colleagues.

"Based on what I did here, I don't think I deserve this,"
Michaels said of his early years in Buffalo radio.

The Buffalo event on Tuesday also honored the late Fred Klestine,
whose DJ career included stops at WWOL, WBNY, WKBW, WADV and
WBUF, as well as the 50th anniversaries of WGRF (97 Rock), WBFO
(88.7) and WNED-TV (Channel 17).

On Saturday, it was Binghamton's turn, as Ray Ross and his
crew staged the biennial Binghamton Broadcasters Reunion. This
was the third time that Binghamton radio and TV veterans got
together to share memories and honor their history, and it was
a packed room at the Binghamton Regency hotel downtown.

This year's Binghamton honorees included a special honor to
WNBF newsman Bob Joseph (who received a new Audio-Technica mic
for his newsgathering), "Broadcaster of the Year" to
WHWK morning man Glenn Pitcher, "Living Legend" Bill
Flynn, whose polka shows have been fixtures on Binghamton radio
since the seventies, and a one-time-only "Dean of Broadcasting"
award to Bill Parker, who's been active in Binghamton radio and
TV since the start-up of WNBF-TV (Channel 12, now WBNG) back
in 1949.

The family of late WBNG/WICZ-TV engineer Ron Shoemaker was
on hand for a posthumous honor - and at the end of the night,
his fellow organizers surprised Ross himself with a plaque honoring
the hard work he's been doing for the last six years to keep
the legacy of Binghamton broadcasting alive.

*In New York City, Air America is staying put at Access.1's
WWRL (1600) after all. Following reports last week that suggested
the station would be dropping its limited carriage of the progressive
talk network, WWRL and Air America have renewed their contract,
keeping the 5-6 AM delayed hour of Rachel Maddow's show in place,
as well as the 3-6 PM Montel Williams and 6-8 PM Ron Reagan shows.

Down the dial at WABC (770), morning man Don Imus moves this
week from the station's own studios at 2 Penn Plaza to Fox Business
Network's studios at Rockefeller Center, in preparation for next
month's launch of Imus' new FBN TV simulcast. The 5-6 AM hour
that had been hosted by Imus newsman Charles McCord is gone from
the WABC schedule, replaced by a new local show with rotating
hosts; this week, it's Doug McIntyre, just cut from the schedule
at Citadel sister station KABC (790 Los Angeles).

CBS Radio's "Fresh 102.7" (WWFS) has named its new
morning show. Jim Douglas and Kim Berk will move the "Jim
and Kim" show west from their present home at Barnstable's
WKJY (98.3 Hempstead) beginning Oct. 12, replacing the now-cancelled
Dave and Danni morning show on Fresh.

Out on Long Island, Principle Broadcasting's WLIE (540 Islip)
is getting still more power. It's been granted a construction
permit to increase daytime power from its present 2500 watts
to 10,000 watts - a move made possible by the final dismissal
of a long-dormant construction permit for never-built WXNH (540)
up in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

On Long Island's
East End, Long Island University is now reviewing four bids from
broadcasters eager to take over WLIU (88.3 Southampton) and sister
station WCWP (88.1 Brookville). One bid comes from Peconic Public
Broadcasting, a local group that would continue WLIU's present
public radio programming; Newsday reports that the other
three bids are from evangelical Christian broadcasters. LIU hopes
to have the station in the hands of a new operator by December
3, when the lease expires on WLIU's present studio space on the
former LIU Southampton campus, now part of SUNY Stony Brook.

*Moving back upstate, Chuck Benfer is out as VP/general manager
of the Cumulus cluster in the Hudson Valley. Cluster sales director
Rob Vanderbeck takes over Benfer's responsibilities at the stations,
which include WPDH, WRRV/WRRB and WCZX ("Mix 97.")

In Gloversville, Michael Sleezer's WFNY (1440) is applying
for a power boost from 3600 watts to 5000 watts by day.

And south of
Rochester, there are new call letters at the Houghton relay signal
for public broadcaster WXXI, as WJSL (90.3 Houghton) becomes
WXXY. The WJSL calls, which originally stood for "Jesus
the Salt and Light," remained in place for a decade after
WXXI took over operation of the former Houghton College radio
station. WXXY carries a split lineup of WXXI's radio programming,
simulcasting morning and afternoon news blocks from WXXI (1370)
and classical music from WXXI-FM (91.5) the rest of the day.

*One of CANADA's oldest radio stations
is distancing itself from its venerable call letters. CFRB (1010
Toronto) is now branding exclusively as "Newstalk 1010,"
eschewing on-air mention of the callsign it's used since the
1920s, when the "RB" stood for "Rogers Batteryless"
radios.

Will ceasing to
use the callsign on the air be the magic that the Astral station
needs to move its audience to a younger demographic? And if CFRB
believes its own publicity about "ceasing to be CFRB,"
how will that square with the little-enforced Industry Canada
rules that, at least on paper, still require hourly callsign
IDs on Canadian AM stations?

In Ottawa, there's a new AM station on the way: Radio Ville-Marie
has been granted a Gatineau,Quebec-based relay of its CIRA-FM
(91.3 Montreal). The AM relay transmitter, one of only a handful
of FM-on-AM relays in Canada, will use 1000 watts by day, 180
watts at night on 1350 kHz.

(Yup, we've been doing this a long time now, and
so we're digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW
was covering one, five, ten and - where available - fifteen years
ago this week, or thereabouts. Note that the column appeared
on an erratic schedule in its earliest years as "New England
Radio Watch," and didn't go to a regular weekly schedule
until 1997. Thanks to LARadio.com
for the idea - and thanks to you, our readers, for the support
that's made all these years of NERW possible!)

September 29, 2008 -

One of the legendary voices of northeastern PENNSYLVANIA
radio has died. Ron Allen joined Scranton's dominant top-40 station,
WARM (590), back in 1958 as a member of the "Sensational
7" team of DJs, spending more than a decade doing afternoons
and the Saturday countdown. But Allen long outlasted the top-40
heyday of WARM. He transitioned into WARM's sports director in
the late sixties, starting the "Ron Allen Sportsline"
show that continued into the early nineties, with a short hiatus
in the 70s when he took a PR job at Pocono Downs. Allen made
WARM the voice of high school sports in the region, and he was
a major booster of the Red Barons minor-league baseball team
when it came to town in 1989.

Allen had been off the air since suffering a stroke in 2000,
ending his broadcast career, but he remained in close contact
with many of his former colleagues. After his death last Tuesday,
some of them traveled from around the country for a Friday wake.
Allen's former colleague Dave Yonki, now proprietor of the "590
Forever" tribute site, reports that attendees included John
Hancock, who was PD at WARM in the mid-eighties and now hosts
a nighttime talk show on WBT in Charlotte, N.C. Ron Allen was
71.

Pittsburgh's controversial sports talker, Mark Madden, is
returning to the airwaves, possibly as early as next Monday.
Madden was pulled from the airwaves at WEAE (1250) after some
uncomplimentary comments about Ted Kennedy, and now ESPN has
released him from his contract (which reportedly had another
year left on it) so he can go across town to Clear Channel's
WXDX (105.9 the X). He'll take over afternoon drive at the station,
which is nominally a modern rocker but has always had a strong
talk component, going back to its days as Howard Stern's Steel
City outlet. (And as our friends over at PBRTV.com point out,
the last hour of Madden's 3-7 PM shift will find three sports
talk shows emanating from Clear Channel's studios in the "Giant
Flash Cube" in Green Tree - Madden on WXDX, Joe Bendel on
WBGG 970, and Ellis Cannon on WPGB 104.7.)

A NEW HAMPSHIRE low-power FM station is getting a new full-power
lease on life. The FCC has granted Highland Community Broadcasting,
owner of classical WCNH-LP (94.7 Concord), a construction permit
for a full-power signal on 91.5 in suburban Bow. Running 100
watts/439' from Wood Hill, south of Concord, the signal should
be an improvement over WCNH's present 34-watt signal from just
west of town. Most critically, the FCC has granted a waiver to
allow Highland to continue to operate the LPFM signal while it
builds the full-power signal, assuring a smooth transition from
94.7 to 91.5 when the time comes.

Boston University's proposed sale of WRNI (1290 Providence)
and WXNI (1230 Westerly) isn't a done deal, at least as far as
some RHODE ISLAND state officials are concerned. Attorney General
Patrick Lynch stepped into the fray last week, asserting his
concern about the fate of donations made to the WRNI Foundation,
the WBUR-controlled entity that handles the station's finances
and holds their licenses. In the meantime, the Foundation for
Ocean State Public Radio, which says it's raised more than $3
million in donations to WRNI since the station went on the air
in 1998, says it will fight to keep the stations on the air with
their current public radio format - even as it tries to avert
WBUR's effort to sell the licenses.

The WBUR organization, never known for its openness with
information, acknowledged to the Boston Globe that WRNI supporters
were "shocked" by the sale announcement, even as station
managers made the claim that WBUR never intended to operate the
Rhode Island stations for more than a few years, a position that
WBUR somehow never took publicly at any point before it announced
the impending sale a week ago.

The "WMEX" oldies are already history in southern
NEW HAMPSHIRE, where WSNH (900 Nashua) ended its brief semi-simulcast
of WMEX (106.5 Farmington NH) and flipped to ESPN sports last
week.

Over in the Upper Valley, WTSL (1400 Hanover) has a new simulcast
- it's being heard now on WXKK (93.5 Springfield VT), which had
been simulcasting WTSL's AC sister, WGXL (92.3 Hanover).

In MAINE, supporters of Air America Radio are fighting to
keep the liberal talk network on the air in Portland. They sent
e-mails and letters to WLVP (870 Gorham) asking the Nassau-owned
station to rethink its proposal to flip to ESPN sports, and it
worked - sort of. WLVP now says it will keep Air America on the
air through the elections, switching to ESPN November 8.

A well-known PENNSYLVANIA morning team is moving on: Ken
Anderson and Kitty McVay of WCTO-FM (96.1 Easton) are taking
their top-rated "Ken and Kitty" show to Cincinnati,
where they'll be heard on "Star" country WYGY (96.5
Lebanon OH). WCTO PD Sam Malone and middayer Becca Lynn take
over morning drive at "Cat Country."

September 24, 1999 -

There's so little going on this week, we'll start off with
a format change in MAINE, Searsport to be exact. That's where
Moon Song Communications has ended the simulcast of WVOM (103.9
Howland)'s talk format on WBYA (101.7). The Bangor-market station
is now doing "Quality Rock" (sort of an AAA-ish thing)
without jocks, except in morning drive when the WVOM simulcast
continues. This is the first time in a few years WBYA has had
its own format; before the WVOM simulcast, it relayed classical
WAVX (106.9 Thomaston, now WBQX). We hear the Moon Song folks
wanted to use the old "Wave" nickname, but WBQX (now
"W-Bach") put a halt to that.

A quiet week this week in MASSACHUSETTS, with little but
the rumor mill to keep us company. What's it telling us? That
the new calls on 96.9 could well be WTKK (fitting, one supposes,
in a market that's seen WKKT and WTTK in past years); that disgraced
pol Peter Blute could soon be sailing into a new job as morning
co-host (with Andy Moes?) at WRKO (680); that Judi Papparelli
has landed in a new slot on Talk America from 10-noon weekdays
-- actually, that's no rumor, it's reality as of this past Monday.

As goes Boston, so goes Albany? Maybe not...but we do note
that smooth jazz is about to make an exit in New York's capital
city, as WHRL (103.1) prepares to make a format change October
1. We hear station manager Peter Baumann is out and PD Brant
Curtis has been bumped down to production director. Hmmm...Clear
Channel, upstate New York...why do we suspect a CHR "Kiss"
clone could be next?

Meantime across the border in CANADA, the CRTC will allow
Bea-Ver Communications to build a new FM station in Chatham.
The 50kW outlet on 94.3 will have a modern rock format, and will
be co-owned with Chatham's CFCO (630) and CKSY (95.1).

And we note another possible reason for the CBC's haste in
moving to FM in major cities: Only by having an FM signal like
CBLA (99.1 Toronto) can the CBC lease out subcarrier space --
which is just what they're applying to do on both 99.1 and CBL-FM
(94.1), apparently to Spanish and Portuguese broadcasters.

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